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This was our second North Carolina journey with Sunburned Hand of the Man, having witnessed the awesome spectacle that was their 2014 Three Lobed Recordings / WXDU day show at Hopscotch. Like the recent show in New York City that we caught at Union Pool, this night at the Three Lobed Recordings Sweet Sixteen Spectacular found the out/noise collective taking more of a song-based approach. Which isn’t to say, in any way, that this was somehow a “traditional” performance; like anything Sunburned and many things Three Lobed, this performance celebrated the experimental and the expeditionary, with those American flags in the backdrop an ironic comment on the freak flags that these artists so willfully fly. Once again, we got to witness a furious version of “The Jaybird,” but other than that and “Double Purity,” this was an entirely different performance than at Union Pool. It meant something for a band of Sunburned’s underground stature to be here alongside such a diverse array of Three Lobed veterans, from Nathan Bowles’ forward-looking Appalachian banjo performance to Steve Gunn’s solo guitar set to Mary Lattimore and Elysse Thebner’s ambient harp and keyboard set. Among all that great music, perhaps nobody more than Sunburned (and OK, Bardo Pond) stood for all the heads in the audience, the unique gathering of the like-minded that this label has brought together. Once again, it was a divine thing.

I recorded this set in the same manner as the other performances of the day, with 8 channels of combined soundboard feed from engineer Brad Womack, onstage microphones, and audience microphones. The sound quality is outstanding. Enjoy!

These are the moments that Trans-Pecos was meant for: daring performances by a crew of avant-garde artists, coming together at the night’s endpoint for a brave and spectacular jam. If you’re not familiar with these players, Tom Carter has appeared on this site several times. The experimental guitarist and co-founder of the band Charalambides continued his long tradition of exceptional work with this year’s Long Time Underground, released earlier this year by Three Lobed Recordings. Carter Thornton, who I hadn’t had the pleasure of seeing before, is a “guitarist” of a sort, but also a builder of instruments and master manipulator of electronic sounds. He’s appeared with a number of well-know underground acts, including fellow Three Lobed alums Enos Slaughter and Gnaw, a doom metal supergroup of sorts. And Chris Corsano — who we saw all over the place during the 2012 Hopscotch Music Festival as its “resident improviser” — is a drum innovator who turns most people’s conception of that instrument on its head.

This night featured each of the three players performing a solo set, with Thornton followed by Carter and then Corsano. Thornton played two new compositions, “Right Turn on Green” and “Who Shot JR” followed by Carter performing a new short improv and two Long Time Underground tracks. Corsano’s improvisation was, as expected, an otherworldly experience, but even that had to take a back seat to the first-time-ever trio performance that followed, when the group combined to create a dense composition featuring electronic sounds, guitars and Corsano’s drumming, which the group is calling “Twelve-Five.” This is something that’ll reward repeat listens, as the careful listener can pick out the roles each of the artists is filling at different times during the performance. We are thrilled to share all of these unique pieces of music.

I recorded this set with Schoeps MK4V microphones at the stage lip, mixed at certain times with the soundboard feed to bolster the electronic sound. The sound quality is outstanding. Enjoy!

There are any number of ways that a fan of the New York underground scene might have run across the guitarist Alan Licht. Along with an extensive discography of his own, Licht has also played a key role in several bands, including the Blue Humans, Love Child, and Run On. Most recently, Licht has appeared as a member of Lee Ranaldo and the Dust. Now, he’s readying a new solo album, which he was kind enough to share a majority of with this group of fans at Union Pool. Compared to some of Licht’s more drone and minimalist work, these compositions, like leadoff track “Riding On the S’s” and “Raw Deal” in particular, show the influence of the recent work with Ranaldo. They have an urgent, narrative feel to them, to the point that you almost feel compelled to throw your own lyrics into them at points. This was the songs’ first exposure to a public audience, and it seems likely that they’ll see some further evolution before the final versions are laid down on the record (one of them, after all, still lacks a title). But even in these raw, new forms, Licht showed a clear vision for and command of them, leading me to believe that new record is going to be a must-have.

I recorded this set with a soundboard feed from engineer Kevin Mazzarelli, combined with Schoeps MK41V microphones. The sound quality is excellent. Enjoy!

Thanks to Jeff Conklin for arranging the show and permission to record Alan’s set.

Since first seeing the Czech band Dva back at Trans Pecos in January, we were struck by the originality of their vision and the playfulness of their style. With their unique mix of instruments and influences — you’ll hear banjos and sax, latin jazz and electronica — the band doesn’t sound quite like anything, but little pieces of everything. This show found Dva closing out the Northern Spy / Ba Da Bing Showcase at SXSW, and it was the ideal way to end a party, with audience members joining the band on stage as they sent us into the night with “Mulatu”. This set did not focus entirely on their most recent release, Nipomo, but rather hopped around their catalog, serving up gems like the set opener “Nunovo Tango”. If you take SXSW for what it should be — a chance to broaden your horizons, seeing worthy acts that might not have been on your radar screen — you’d have been hard pressed not to call this Dva set one of the highlights of the week.

I recorded this set in the same manner as the other recordings from this showcase, with Schoeps MK4V microphones and a soundboard feed. While the sound reveals some limitations of the venue acoustics compared to our previous recording of the band, overall it is quite good. Enjoy!

Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct links or the files on other sites without our permission. Please respect our request.

The visual you’re seeing above is the members of Cloud Becomes Your Hand, gathered on the floor to perform a ritualistic outro dance as their instruments, still on stage, tick down the final minutes of their bonanza of a South By Southwest set. Of all the bands who played the Northern Spy / Ba Da Bing showcase this year, it was CBYH that I perhaps looked forward to the most. Their latest record, Rocks or Cakes, released in February, is a delightful dose of avant-prog weirdness that finds itself throwing traditional song structures out the window, or fucking with pop sounds so hard you don’t know what to make of them. The band’s electronic sounds are made not by a MacBook Pro, but by live instruments, some that I have to assume were custom-designed for the band’s purposes. Where CBYH succeeds and other bands fail, in part, is that their songs are actually good in addition to being “weird”; amid the layers of sounds are also melodies for you to latch onto, as on the standout track “Sand of Sea”, streaming below. This set found the band giving us most of Rocks or Cakes, and the songs were all the more impressive to see live. We expect to see great things from this Brooklyn-based band; don’t miss them when they’re back on the road.

I recorded this set in the same manner as my other recordings this night, with Schoeps MK4V microphones in the optimum position hanging over the crowd and a soundboard feed. The sound quality of this particular set is the best of the night, and is outstanding. Enjoy!

Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct links or the files on other sites without our permission. Please respect our request.

The Brooklyn band Starring, fairly new darlings of the avant garde Northern Spy label, have made significant sonic evolutions since their 2010 release Wife of God. Withthe addition of Matt Mehlan – best known for his work as Skeletons – to the already-talented roster of players, the band’s sound has moved away from their more kraut and punk-leaning earlier material toward the type of longer-form prog-psych compositions that Mehlan is known for. This year’s ABCDEFG-HIJKLMNOP-QRSTUV-WXYZ (a keyboard’s worth of an album title), which was played almost in its entirety at this show at the Knitting Factory, places Starring most closely in tradition of great current New York bands like Oneida and Black Dice and classic acts like Neu! and Sun Ra. You can hear the range of ideas and influences at work in the song “best”, where a driving backbeat and accompanying violin build blends with trippy organ, guitar and flute parts, and frontwoman Clara Hunter’s most obvious lyric is the borrower chorus of the Tina Turner classic, “Simply the Best”. There is a lot going on in this and most of the band’s other songs, and for fans of post-structuralism, there is almost as much to like about the mere attempt as there is about the result. That said, the night’s most accessible number, “aphonia”, which reminded me a bit of late period Battles, may have been more straightforward, but well might have been a stronger demonstration of the band’s chops. Starring is the type of band that refuses to remain static, and I’m sure by the next time I see them, there will be yet more dimensions to explore.

I recorded this set with MBHO KA200N microphones and an excellent soundboard feed by the Knit engineer, Rob. The sound quality is outstanding. Enjoy!

Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct links or the files on other sites without our permission. Please respect our request.

Starring
2012-11-09
Knitting Factory
Brooklyn, NY USA

Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by acidjack

Rhyton is the latest project helmed by Dave Shuford – best known for his work with No Neck Blues Band and D. Charles Speer and the Helix – and compatriots Jimy SeiTang (Psychic Ills) and Spencer Herbst (Messages, Matta Llama). I have been an admirer of Shuford’s for awhile now; he is a musician’s musician, who pursues his vision relentlessly without regard to genre, style, texture or time. While Shuford has played everything from country-blues to Greek folk music during his career, Rhyton expresses he, SeiTang and Herbst’s experimental impulses. The band’s first self-titled LP is a masterwork of improvisation – the result of a three-day recording session, the record captures the raw, live feel of these players at their best.

I invited Rhyton to be the second band at the NYCTaper 2012 Northside Festival Showcase in hopes of seeing the exact kind of set they delivered – a two-segment, free flowing live jam so new that these songs did not have formal titles. This is music that rewards set and setting, and the post-industrial 285 Kent space, with its psychedelic wall art, was the perfect venue for the band’s mind-bending style of playing. While we (and the band) would have loved for it to be longer, Rhyton’s set hinted at the new thrills to come on their forthcoming Three Lobed Recordings LP The Emerald Tablet, due out later this year.

I recorded this set with Audio Technica 3031 microphones split wide at the stage lip, combined with a soundboard feed, to create an upfront, “in your face” style of recording that provides maximum separation between instruments.

The entire set is streaming in full below. Enjoy!

Special thanks to Dave Shuford and Rhyton for playing the show.

Stream “Transitory Screed”

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Stream “Paroon”

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Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct links or the files on other sites without our permission. Please respect our request.

Rhyton
2012-06-14
285 Kent
Brooklyn, NY USA

Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by acidjack

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